Day 23 - Off to Carnarvon Gorge National Park.

We had our first frost overnight. There was a light film of ice on the windscreen of the Hilux and the tea towel from last night felt like it had been starched. The water in one of Russell's tanks was iced up enough that it would not pump.

Ruth was first up and had the fire kicked off again with a few hot coals still left from last nights fire. After scouting for some more wood we lead a nice little fire going that helped warm us up over breakfast on this frosty morning.

We packed up and headed off around 8.30 am for our journey to Carnarvon Gorge - firstly making our way to Roma for a morning tea stop.
Then we were off up the Carnarvon Highway through Injune (our lunch stop) and arriving at Carnarvon Gorge campground about 2.30pm.

Carnarvon Gorge is an oasis in the semi-arid heart of central Queensland - with towering white sandstone cliffs forming a spectacular steep-sided gorge with narrow, vibrantly-coloured and lush side-gorges.

It is a pretty busy campground at this time of year - but we were very happy with the generous sized campsites we have.

We were set up in quick time and then headed off to check out the surrounds. We made our way to the starting point for the main gorge walks and enjoyed a short nature walk along Carnarvon Creek as the light was starting to fade. We got some really nice photos of the creek at this time of day.

Unfortunately we are not allowed to have fires in this National Park and we now need to rug up as night comes on and the air rapidly cools in the evenings. The night was therefore not a late one as you can only cope in the cold for so long and then it drives you to bed.

We did later discover that a few people had a "brazier" type of fire which they had brought with them and upon asking the rangers were given special permission to use. We were pretty annoyed at this as it is clearly stated that there are to be "no fires" in this NP and you cannot just start having different rules for a few.
We honestly don't understand why they don't organise a communal fire pit, at least some nights, to be managed by the rangers.

We also had a large group of teenagers with an organisation called "Pathfinders" set up all around the back area fom our campsite. So we were expecting to have some amount of noise into the evening - but - amazingly they were pretty good and in bed and quiet at a reaonable hour.

Posted via DraftCraft app